Category Archives: Trinity River

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings joined Craig Miller, George Dunham and Gordon Keith on The Ticket this morning for two segments: the first, a relatively straightforward rundown of some rather familiar issues; the second, a quiz administered by Gordon Keith that led to his being officially proclaimed the fourth member of The Ticket’s morning Musers.

You can listen to the whole thing below — including the mayor’s use of a word you can’t say on terrestrial radio. (Explains that “failed stint” as a radio reporter.) But, for those who don’t like to listen to the radio on the Internet, a few highlights:

On his easy road to re-election: “I think citizens are pretty pumped up about living in Dallas in right now. They’re very optimistic, they’ve got a lot of hope, and they see things happening, and when that happens, usually the incumbent wins.” Also: Dallas “doesn’t like” negative campaigns. Good to know. And, the mayor says “I would have felt like a jerk” if he hadn’t run for a second term.

On the Trinity River toll road: “We have this place that’s nine times bigger than Central Park, and we should turn that into a world-class park, recreational facility.” (Take a shot!) “Even when it rains like this, it’s OK, it’ll go back down. The question is: Do we use that space for a reliever road off of 35 around downtown, and that’s where a lot of that debate is. And, really, I found out the debate isn’t even to have a reliever road. It was the size of the reliever road that’s really in question. A lot of people did not want a big major toll road, so that’s why I hired this group of people that came in last fall and put together a new vision for the road — a four-lane, kinda more meandering Storrow Drive — if you’ve been to Boston — situation that can also access the park. Everybody likes that. We’re going to start town hall meetings I think next week, and citizens are going to get to opine on that, and then we’ll decide where we go from there, and hopefully we can pull the city back together again.”

On the “stigma” of the Trinity: “Everybody acts like it’s this beautiful thing down there, but it’s not.”

On “toughest thing” in the first term: “Moving from someone who works for a living to somebody that people actually listen to and pay attention to. Suddenly you move from a person to a thing.”

On potholes: “A lane mile costs a million to redo. So if you’ve got three lanes, for one mile that’s $3 million. Construction costs are huge right now in Dallas. It’s a great time to be in that business.” And a bad time to be a Dallas driver. “It’s an expensive proposition. Most cities will take their bond money [to repair streets] and we need to do more of that.”

At which point Craig Miller asked the mayor if potholes he encounters on his drive to work get, ya know, a little special attention.

“It’s not supposed to but I would be bull——– if I said …”

You can’t say that on the radio.

On his detractors: “It doesn’t bother me personally. … When people put negative energy into not accomplishing the problem in front of you, that’s just stealing money from people’s pocket — the taxpayer’s.”

On the media: “That’s their job to create a narrative of drama and tension. … I want people not to focus on politics, but productivity.”

And we haven’t even gotten to Gordon’s ownership of Lee Harvey Oswald’s bathtub. Continue reading →

Trammell Crow Park is still down there, below the Sylvan Avenue Bridge. Never forget.

More than a year after the long-delayed Sylvan Avenue Bridge redo finally opened, reconnecting Irving Boulevard to West Dallas, you still can’t get to Trammell Crow Park and the boat launch along the Trinity River below (which I discovered the hard way a couple of weeks ago). The Texas Department of Transportation says that should change one week from Friday — “weather permitting.”

At this point, who even knows how delayed this project is. The old bridge, which flooded during big weather, closed in September 2012 to make way for the $42-million redo built high above the Trinity River levees. The redo was to take two years, give or take. It finally took in April 2014, when two lanes opened. We were told then that we’d have access to the park and boat launch come August of 2014.

It’s now April 22, 2015.

“We’ve told the city council four, five times, ‘It’s this date,’ and then we have to go back and say it’s not going to open after all,” says Sarah Standifer, interim director of the Trinity Watershed Management. So, Sarah, would you say this has been … frustrating? “I would agree.”

The old bridge used to flood. Which made for pretty cool pictures. WHAT? TOLL ROAD? Sorry, couldn’t hear you.

Standifer told us to talk to TxDOT, which contracted with Webber LLC to do the work. So we did.

“TxDOT met with the city of Dallas on the Sylvan project last Friday,” says TxDOT spokesman Tony Hartzel via email. “TxDOT is working on getting the park access bridge and boat ramp open May 1, weather permitting. The coordination with the city involves getting traffic signals ready and making sure Dallas Flood Control accepts the work. We’ll be having follow up meetings with the city in the next few days to see if everything is still in line to make that date. Also at this time, pedestrian fencing is being installed with a daily lane closure for that installation work.”

We asked Hartzel if Webber’s being fined for missing the deadline, which has been dead for months. His response, via email: “TxDOT is aware the project has missed its estimated completion date. The department will determine a final amount of liquidated damages at project closeout.”

So, that’s a yes.

Meanwhile, Standifer adds, “The parks department is doing improvements to the lake right now. They’re working on giving me a date when the path around the lake will be wrapped up.”

In other words: May 1 … ish. I’d write it down in pencil. Or invisible ink.

For those not keeping score at home, if the 84-year-old park-and-pedestrian bridge over the Trinity River were to become a city-designated historic landmark, that could roadblock — temporarily or, perhaps, even permanently — Dallas City Hall’s long-standing plans to build the $1.5(ish)-billion high-speed toll road along the east levee of the Trinity. Officially designated landmarks can’t be altered without the OK of the Landmark Commission, and according to a letter a Texas Department of Transportation architect sent to the Texas Historical Commission last fall, the current version of the toll road — the so-called Alternative 3C — would involve removing about 195 feet of the 2,130-foot-long bridge to allow for connectors to Woodall Rodgers Freeway. According to TxDOT’s Mario Sanchez, that’s “9.2 percent of total structure length.”

Writes Sanchez in the letter you will find below, Alternative 3C will have an “adverse effect” on the bridge.

From the letter TxDOT sent to the Texas Historical Commission, a look at what would be removed from the historic bridge to make room for the toll road

That’s not the only change on the horizon if the toll road ever gets built. As Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan told the council in February, the newly car-free Continental could once again see cars — those entering and exiting the toll road. Said Jordan, “That section will have traffic, pedestrians and cyclists. We’ll have to control it with a traffic signal.” The anti-toll road faction of the city council was appalled.

Landmark Commissioner Dustin Gadberry had the item placed on Monday’s agenda, and council member Adam Medrano’s appointee insists he didn’t do it to kill the toll road. Even so, he says, he knows that’s how people will interpret it. “It’s the headline,” he says.

“For me, personally, it’s more about the bridge,” he says. “It’s something we should have protected from any kinds of changes down there. I know there’s no way to keep it away from the headline. But I live down in the Design District .. and to me, that bridge is such a connection point from Victory Park to Trinity Groves to West Dallas. It’s an integral piece of the puzzle representing the historic fabric of Dallas, and you can’t take it for granted. We need to protect those. It’s such a beautiful bridge, and what we’ve done to it is great. It says a lot as a city if we go, ‘You know, we like this bridge, we want to protect this bridge, it’s a piece of our history’ Let’s put this in stone and say we’re protecting this.”

In 1998 Dallas voters OK’d spending $246 million on the Trinity River Corridor Project, with $30 million of that earmarked for flood control along the Elm Fork of the Trinity in northwest Dallas. Much of that money was spent buying the land on which the city planed the Elm Fork Soccer Park, now known as MoneyGram Park. But long-proposed levees (one near Luna Road has been on the to-do list since 1965!) and other flood-protection checklist items were never tended to for various reasons, among them the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it wouldn’t match funds needed to pay for the enhancements. That left $12 million on the table, and officials in the city’s Trinity Watershed Management Department now want to reallocate those funds up and down the Trinity River.

Sarah Standifer, interim director of the department, told the council’s Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee Monday that the Corps would like to spend $7 million dealing with erosion-control issues at Interstate 45 and the Trinity River near the so-called Lower Chain of Wetlands. The Corps would also like to complete trails in the Dallas Floodway Extension, among them the Trinity Forest Trail south of downtown. If the Corps can get its hands on $7 million, the city would kick in $7 million to complete those trails, which also serve as maintenance and access roads.

Per staff’s recommendation the remaining $5 million would then go toward drainage issues at MoneyGram Park, which gets a little soggier than city officials would like.

“What we have found this winter, with all of our rains we’ve had, is as much effort as we put into draining on the fields, we found it needs to be enhanced,” Park and Recreation Director Wills Winters tells The Dallas Morning News. “The fields work fine, and Dallas Cup is playing there for the second year in a row. We put in a sand-based drainage system, but to elevate the fields to the next class, it’s desirable to put in actual drainage pipes beneath the sand.”

On the one hand, sure, building trails down in the Lower Chain of Wetlands sounds great, said Sandy Greyson, especially if the Corps is going to split the $14 million price tag. “That’s a pretty good deal,” she said.

But it’s far from a done deal: Standifer said the Corps believes there’s a “reasonable chance” it will get the money in the next two years, but it might not. Construction on those trails wouldn’t begin until the Corps gets that money in hand, she said. But time is of the essence, according to city and Corps officials. If the feds come up with that $7 million — and Rob Newman, the Corps’ Trinity River Corridor Project manager, told the council he’ll know by mid-April if at least some of that money will be there or not — and the city doesn’t have its matching funds in hand, then that federal dough likely goes adios.

That’s why Vonciel Jones Hill, the committee chair, wanted the vote taken today — and why she wanted the council to vote in favor of the split for the soccer complex and the trail system. Continue reading →

Just when you thought the Dallas City Council could not get any more entertaining …

There are a lot of familiar names signed up to address the council Wednesday during its open-mic sessions, along with a lot of familiar topics. Some people still want to talk about fluoride (still!). Marvin Crenshaw will address “Zionism” (cannot wait). Ifiok Ekong will discuss “Declaration of the 3rd World War” (say what now?). Also on the to-discuss list: the Omni Dallas, the West Dallas lead-smelter agreement, “the community” and other topics.

And then there’s the Trinity River toll road. Two people are signed up to talk about it — and they’re both Dallas City Council members.

One is Philip Kingston, who, of course, is vehemently against it. The other is Vonciel Jones Hill, chair of the council’s Transportation & Trinity River Project Committee and an outspoken proponent of a high-speed toll road between the river’s levees.

This appears to be the first time — in recent memory, at least — that council members have signed up to speak to their colleagues. Isn’t this why people run for city council? So they don’t have to sign up to talk to the city council?

But Mayor Mike Rawlings’ memo to the council earlier this week, concerning Scott Griggs’ anti-toll road tirade and Rick Callahan’s rebuttal on March 4, has created this rather unique situation. Said the mayor, as far as he and City Attorney Warren Ernst are concerned, the Texas Open Meeting Act “allows for open microphone speakers to address the city council on topics of their choosing, [but] it does not mean that councilmembers are then free to further deliberate or discuss the topic raised.”

The chair of the city council’s Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee wants the toll road between the levees.

Griggs joked yesterday that “maybe I should sign up as Citizen Scott to speak every week, if Mayor Rawlings doesn’t want to hear from a council member.” Kingston and Hill have taken that next step to talk about the road Rawlings supports.

Says Kingston, “It is an absolute shame that a topic of such great importance to the public — a topic Sen. [Royce] West had a town hall about this morning, a topic Rep. [Rafael] Anchia had a town hall about — cannot be discussed by the city council because the mayor doesn’t want to talk about, forcing me to go to the open mic.”

The mayor wasn’t at the March 4 meeting. And he won’t be at Wednesday’s: Per a memo he sent to council late Friday, he will be at the White House next week for the U.S. Infrastructure Investment Summit, with First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans in tow. Once again, Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins will be filling in for Rawlings.

This is NOT the kind of park Robbie Good and Angela Hunt are talking about.

Six years ago — my, how time crawls — then-Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt pitched what she called the Trinity River Corridor Project Plan B, which involved forgetting all about the Trinity River toll road and moving ahead with, among other things, the long-approved park between the levees. Little has changed since then: We’re still arguing about the merits of the toll road, while the park remains parked (for the most part) save for the Trinity Skyline Trail that Hunt and Scott Griggs had to fight for even after getting the council’s OK.

Which is why graphic designer Robbie Good just launched what he’s calling the Trinity Park Collaborative, an idea hatched following a sitdown last week with Hunt about the potential for filling in the greenspace between the levees.

At the moment it’s little more than a website and a fledgling Twitter account and a Facebook page. But Good says he hopes the endeavor winds up serving as a “a community liaison for existing Trinity groups” and neighborhoods near the Trinity, from the Design District to La Bajada in West Dallas to the Cedars to South Dallas.

“The toll road and park are at odds,” says Good. “You can’t have a great park with a toll road. You just can’t. Anybody who has any imagination can look into the floodplain and see that. It’s depressing what it’ll to do the value of the park, the experience of the park. And to see what Houston has done with the Buffalo Bayou is a huge slap in the face. It’s like they’re trying to insult us with that: ‘Wow, we can’t get our stuff together on this.’”

Technically Hunt’s not involved with the collaborative — technically. But the woman who fought harder than anyone to kill the road in 2007 says today that she “absolutely want[s] to be involved in creating the Trinity park voters have wanted since 1998.”

Says the former council member, “I love the idea of letting folks know the people who are opposed to this toll road are opposed not simply because they believe a high-speed, limited-access massive toll road is a bad idea from a transportation perspective. It’s about being for the park. It’s having a vision for Dallas that includes this incredible greenspace in the heart of our city. And it’s a vision of protecting this for generations to come.” Continue reading →

The mayor doesn’t want Scott Griggs doing this without warning at council meetings anymore.

Two weeks ago a couple of Dallas City Council members debated the pros and cons of a toll road between the Trinity River levees. And, as it turns out, Mayor Mike Rawlings isn’t happy about it. At all.

On Wednesday he sent the council a memo telling them to stop talking about things that aren’t on the council’s agenda. Insists Rawlings, doing so violates the Texas Open Meetings Act.

The toll road wasn’t on the council’s agenda, but the debate — pitting pro-roader Rick Callahan against Scott Griggs — wasn’t exactly unprompted: Three people on the city secretary’s public-speakers list stepped to the open mic to proselytize in favor of the Trinity River toll road, among them Gelinda Aguirre, the former secretary for Vonciel Jones Hill (head of the council’s Transportation & Trinity River Project Committee and an ardent toll road supporter), and Pleasant Grove resident Yolanda Williams, council member Rick Callahan’s current appointee to the Dallas Park Board. Said Williams, southern residents “always get caught in the middle” during election season. “We voted for it twice,” she said in support of the toll road. “Why do we have to fight? … We are tired. We said we want it.”

At which point toll road opponent Scott Griggs chimed in with a lengthy speech in which he called the long-proposed, long-unbuilt $1.5-billion-or-so toll road “the biggest boondoggle there is” and “nothing but a sales job based on some water colors.” The longer he spoke, the more passionate he became. Watch for yourself below. Go right to the 43:26 mark.

But as our Brandon Formby pointed out two weeks ago, the whole thing made Dallas City Attorney Warren Ernst very uncomfortable, to the point where he told Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, acting as mayor in Rawlings’ absence, to shut it down since the topic wasn’t on the agenda. That didn’t sit well with Callahan, who said, “This gets to hit the press, this gets to hit the TV waves and you’re trying to mute my voice.” Others ultimately weighed in as well.

And Rawlings wants that to stop. Now.

“I was unable to attend the March 4, 2015 city council meeting, but I watched the video of it,” he says in the memo you can read below. “I asked Warren Ernst to clarify the confusion about what responses to public inquiry or comments are permitted during the city council meeting public comment open microphone portion of the agenda. The key point is that, while the Act allows for open microphone speakers to address the city council on topics of their choosing, it does not mean that councilmembers are then free to further deliberate or discuss the topic raised.” Continue reading →

Willis Winters, Park and Rec director, says there’s a maintenance gate to the preserve that is supposed to stay locked. But it’s not easy, he says.

“They’re usually broken and stolen, and people back in to there all of the time,” he says. As a result, he says, there’s a lot of illegal dumping around there.

Winters first saw the photos when we sent them to Syed on Monday. He says it’s definitely not a park project. He has his theories. He’s keeping those to himself.

We’ve sent emails to Jody Puckett, head of Dallas Water Utilities. No response so far. Messages have also been left for Standifer. I recounted this via email to Ben Sandifer last night. His response: “That sound of frustration sounds familiar!”

Syed says maybe she’ll know something more later today. We’ll update when she responds. This story, though, is a familiar one. We’ve been here before, and not so long ago: Back in September Standifer’s predecessor had to apologize for city contractors who emptied a wetland pond near the Trinity River. That too was a Sandifer discovery.

“This is unacceptable,” he wrote Monday. “Not just damaged but destroyed in an absolute sense that the change is forever permanent. The area is still damp but is now an absolute rutted mess of mud.

“It would only be fair to recapitulate the points of the last land management incident involving the Great Trinity Forest. The clearcutting of public lands, the misuse of Waters of the United States, the draining of a pond, the killing of wildlife in said pond. The seemingly complete indifference of those responsible. In the undulant course of trying to educate those in local government the rough hewn guidelines of land stewardship, I feel as though it has been an absolute and immoral failure on my part.”

For now, at least, the Dallas Police Department has “steered away” from using drones, Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence told a Dallas City Council committee this afternoon. But when it comes to keeping an eye on the 20-mile-long Trinity River Corridor, well, it might be willing to make an exception — especially when it comes to search-and-rescue operations in, say, the Great Trinity Forest. But right now, it’s just something the department is considering, one of any number of possible options available to a department struggling with ways to keep the Trinity Corridor safe as it continues to add new amenities.

Today’s discussion, held during a meeting of the council’s Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee meeting, was the long-awaited follow-up to last summer’s initial chitchat about a subject Lawrence said at the time would require a lot of “catch-up.” The Caruth Foundation provided the grant that allows DPD to do just that: A holistic corridor-safety master plan’s in the works, and Lawrence told the council today it would be ready in two months, give or take.

Until then, he said, the department has tried to “gradually increase our presence” along the corridor, especially in the southern half. But without knowing who’s going where and when they’re going there, trying to disperse officers is a fruitless endeavor. Said Lawrence, there’s a lot of ground to cover, and it’s only getting larger once you factor in the Texas Horse Park, the Trinity Forest Golf Course, the MoneyGram Soccer Park in Northwest Dallas, the Trinity Audubon Center and all those hike-n-bike trails popping up.

Dallas Police officer Frank Ruspoli watches as a wrecker pulls a car out of the Trinity River on Oct. 7, 2010.

“I thought it was going to be easier than it was,” Lawrence told the council, noting that no other city in the country has to deal with something like the Trinity River Corridor. “When we look at how we handle the entire Trinity, there are so many different types of terrains we have to deal with. How do we deal with the wetlands, the forest, the open areas, the soccer fields in the northwest? The other big piece is, when we look at the existing ordinances we’re going to have to design Trinity-specific ordinances.” And writing those will be no easy thing.

The Trinity Trust — which, last we looked, was hoping to add everything from a zip line to a 18-hole lighted disc golf course along the river — is trying to help, Lawrence said. It has already donated one all-terrain vehicle to the department, with a second on the way. But that’s only the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, he says, noting the need for enhanced horse and bike patrols. But, again, he’s just not sure where. Not yet. The ATV, incidentally, will go to the Southeast Patrol Division, Lawrence told the council. “They have the greatest need.”

Said the chief, “We’re using things we’ve not used before. We need things we’ve not needed before.”

Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins asked Lawrence how the department will work with the Dallas City Marshal’s Office tasked with stopping illegal dumping along the river. Said the chief, DPD will work with everyone, including Dallas Fire-Rescue, which might find itself having to conduct a water rescue near, oh, the Dallas Wave whitewater feature that’s still not considered the safest thing in the river.

“We don’t yet have a clear handle on what the need is, and therefore how much resources will be needed,” said committee chair Vonciel Jones Hill, who’s term-limited in May. “I brought this to you today so you can start thinking about this. The departments have been thinking about this for quite a while.” Said Hill, securing the Trinity River Corridor is “quite a bear to get your arms around.” And who knows what’s needed. Or how much it will cost.

“Let me be very clear,” Hill told the council. “This is not a matter for this year’s budget. Now, it may be an issue for future budgets, but they will bring a guiding document on what needs to be done, how much personnel is needed, how much it will cost. But for now, those are things that are still fermenting.”

So says Mayor Mike Rawlings in a video recap-slash-look-ahead posted on Christmas Eve, which touches on all the Big Events of 2014 (Ebola, the city’s dropping homicide rate, the can’t-kill-it Trinity River toll road) and sneaks a peek at the agenda of his second term, assuming, of course, he’s elected to a second term.

The first part deals with the usual suspects — Ebola, chief among them, as well as the city’s dropping crime rate. Says Rawlings about our October, “We are so proud of how the citizens acted during that time.” Dallasites, for the most part, were all about “science first, not scare tactics.” He also thanks a Dallas Police Department — “our police officers do a great job” — that found itself dealing with 15 officer-involved shootings in 2014.

He then touches on the reasons why he decided to run again for mayor, and points to the four major themes of his second term: growing southern Dallas, focusing on education, making Dallas “a city were artists come and live and perform and write plays and paint paintings and write music” and “continuing to dial up our international presence.”

And then, of course, there’s The Road That Has Not Been Built and Will Not Die.

Says Rawlings of the Trinity River toll road, “To me it’s imperative that we’re able to connect our cities together, connect mothers with their kids to their jobs that they’ve got in North Dallas and other places and do it in a way that doesn’t take an hour to get back and forth. That’s one of the reasons I’m a big supporter of that.

And he wants you to elect a good new city council, something on which we can all agree.